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nydus/The City of God, Volume IPublic

Saint Augustine defends the Christian religion against accusations that the sack of Rome by the Goths resulted from the abandonment of polytheistic worship. This twenty-two-book treatise refutes pagan arguments regarding worldly prosperity and divine worship before establishing the author's own theology concerning the origin, history, and destiny of the city of God and the city of the world.

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Table of Contents

BOOK ELEVENTH.

ARGUMENT.

HERE BEGINS THE SECOND PART402 OF THIS WORK, WHICH TREATS OF THE ORIGIN, HISTORY, AND DESTINIES OF THE TWO CITIES, THE EARTHLY AND THE HEAVENLY. IN THE FIRST PLACE, AUGUSTINE SHOWS IN THIS BOOK HOW THE TWO CITIES WERE FORMED ORIGINALLY, BY THE SEPARATION OF THE GOOD AND BAD ANGELS; AND TAKES OCCASION TO TREAT OF THE CREATION OF THE WORLD, AS IT IS DESCRIBED IN HOLY SCRIPTURE IN THE BEGINNING OF THE BOOK OF GENESIS.
  1. Of this part of the work, wherein we begin to explain the origin and end of the two cities.

The city of God we speak of is the same to which testimony is borne by that Scripture, which excels all the writings of all nations by its divine authority, and has brought under its influence all kinds of minds, and this not by a casual intellectual movement, but obviously by an express providential arrangement. For there it is written, "Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God."403 And in another psalm we read, "Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of His holiness, increasing the joy of the whole earth."404 And, a little after, in the same psalm, "As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God. God has established it for ever." And in another, "There is a river the streams whereof shall

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